No company is invincible (not Microsoft or google or yahoo or any other), but the likliehood of FaceBook displacing those companies is lottery-like. It doesn't have the search capabilties of those big guys that drives most of their traffic, and once you grow up, you're just not going to care that much about social networking, because you can travel away from your school, and you have a job, and maybe kids, and a real social life, even if it sucks.

yeah, I hear about how guys in the their 30s and 40s get myspace, but it's usually to get girls in their teens and 20s. these social networking sites are a great marketing tool for reaching students and recent graduates, but what value does it provide for the rest of us?

I also have to make one more comment - getting the local weather isn't that big of a deal. most people have windows (the glass things, not the computer software) in their homes, they don't need to log on to their website to check the weather.

Facebook may only be useful for looking up students and recent grads now, but those students will become the professionals of the future. I don't see those students abandoning Facebook when they have created a valuable social network.

It is the easiest way to find and keep in touch with friends and acquaintances whom you can't meet in person. (I've gotten in touch with a few friends from elementary school I haven't seen in 10 years through Facebook.)

And I definitely think it will become increasingly merged with professional networking. I've had potential employers friend me on Facebook, and a rather bizarre request from my current boss the other day. He wanted to "borrow" my account for 30 minutes to view the profile of applicants in my network. I turned down the request, but I couldn't help but be shaken over now how important Facebook has become in today's world.

jinxyte:

And I definitely think it will become increasingly merged with professional networking. I've had potential employers friend me on Facebook, and a rather bizarre request from my current boss the other day. He wanted to "borrow" my account for 30 minutes to view the profile of applicants in my network.

I think they're trying to figure out ''who you are'' because you know, everyone is exactly who they say they are on facebook.

That being said, FB is a great tool for finding friends that you've lost touch with in a while - I was going back to the city I used to live in in high school for a night, and used it to find a couple of friends that still lived there - and voila! i found a place to crash and some friends to hang out with.

but whats so 'valuable' about me being able to see three hundred pictures of my friends in various states of inebriation? If i want to see my friends in various states of inebriation, I'll go out and get inebriated with them...

I was among the first year of college students to start to use Facebook ('04), to the point where my friends just a year older have only recently joined networks, finally bowing to the poking and prodding of their juniors.

Now, I'm among the first of those future professionals you speak of, and as you have predicted, I have not given up Facebook (or MySpace, or Friendster; note to the author re: first sentence: there is no need to make a "momentous decision;" there is no godly reason you can't just join both).

As an example of the very phenomenon you're talking about, I recently added as a "friend" a girl who I have been informed will be starting work at the same company at the same time, through Facebook's company networks.

Then, I looked at the wedding photos of a couple I had known in college, but whose wedding I was unable to attend due to the bar exam. I left comments on the bride's "wall," complimenting her on her dress, the cake, and their beautifully framed ketubah, and then sent her an e-card and an iTunes gift certificate as a belated wedding present.

Anyone who believes that the internet is for college students needs to follow their new employees home and watch them play World of Warcraft....

So an eCard compliment on the Bride's dress makes up for not attending the wedding or calling in person as a followup to talk about the wedding, because your personal decision to put your career (bar exam) first wasn't a slight at all. Yeah right.

And if you think that after 3 years of being in the job you are now one of the seasoned professionals the poster was speaking of - you are sadly mistaken.

Now before you dismiss me as someone who doesn't get the online realms - I'll point out that I've been playing in them for some 33 years (11 time longer than your 3). I met my wife through interactions online. So I full well understand what these realms can and cannot do. I even use LinkedIn for professional networking. But if you think that FaceBook is a useful tool for professional work, then I suspect you really don't understand what the workplace is about.

The goal of professional networking is to filter out the interactions that are not work related. Facebook does the opposite. It doesn't really weight the links you have in any way that is professionally meaningful. and it adds tons of dross to the links.

Now I would even go as far as to suggest that your boss's use of Facebook to look at personal profiles of applicants is violating HR Interview policies and regulations - (though it could be argued that since they "self-published" this information, its "in the public realm"). If you've had any formal interview training you will know that checking marital status, personal likes and dislikes, friendship networks and the like are all "off limits" to a job interviewer. The only thing the interviewer can ask about is what is specificaly relevant to the job at hand.

Using Facebook as a screening tool then would be considered and intrusion into such "no-go" areas. Furthermore, since Facebook offers no guarantees of truthfulness or accuracy, relying on such information is a great way to open your company up to a discrimination law suit.

But beyond that, of course its a great tool (uhuh).

I agree with your last statement jinx, I am attending a University currently and the entire school is on FB. Almost all of the profiles have unprofessional pictures, and quotes. I am not surprised at all about the boss wanting to look at some applicants on FB. Had he looked he probably would not have liked what he found, and been able to easily weed some of the applicants out.

Um, wow. Have you ever taken a bar exam before? It's not the kind of thing you just blow off to go to the wedding of someone you knew from the dorms in college. If I hadn't taken the bar exam when I did, I would have lost my job. But I guess that was selfish of me.

And for your information, I did call her after she got back from her honeymoon. Her cell phone didn't work in Belize.